“OK,” O’Hara replied. “I would like to be there, Peter, when you and Weisbach serve your warrants.”
“I’m sure Peter can arrange that, Mickey,” the Mayor said. “C
an’t you, Peter?”
“Yes, sir,” Wohl said as he took the press release from his father and started to read it.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you could find Staff Inspector Weisbach at Peter’s office in the morning,” the Mayor said.
“I got to go find a phone,” O’Hara said.
“Matt,” Carlucci said to Chief Lowenstein, “are you having problems with Commissioner Czernich’s reorganization plan?”“‘Commissioner Czernich’s reorganization plan’?” Lowenstein quoted mockingly. “Hell no, Jerry. I know where the Commissioner gets his ideas, and I wouldn’t dream of questioning his little inspirations.”
Chief Wohl chuckled.
“But I would like to know what the hell’s going on,” Lowenstein added.
“Well, apparently the Commissioner thought that since Allgood decided to retire, Internal Affairs needed some reorganization.”
“Why?” Lowenstein pursued.
“To put a point on it, Matt, because it wasn’t doing the job it’s supposed to do.”
“You got something specific?”
“Yeah, I got something specific,” Carlucci said unpleasantly. “That surveillance Peter has been running, that tape I got this morning, because Payne climbed out on a ledge and put the microphone back? It recorded a conversation between Lieutenant Seymour Meyer of Central Police Division’s Vice Squad—your friend, Matt—and Paulo Cassandro. You know who Paulo Cassandro is, right?”
“Take it easy, Jerry,” Chief Wohl said.
“I know who Paulo Cassandro is,” Lowenstein said softly.
“What they were talking about, Matt, was that Meyer and his good buddy, Captain Vito Cazerra—you know Cazerra, don’t you, Matt? He commands the Sixth District?”
Lowenstein didn’t reply.
“I asked you if you know Captain Cazerra,” the Mayor said nastily.
“Yeah. I know him,” Lowenstein said.
“As I was saying, we now have a tape of Meyer telling Cassandro that he and Cazerra don’t think they’re getting a big enough payoff from the mob for letting a Polack whore from Hazleton named Harriet Osadchy run a call-girl operation in our better hotels. You know Harriet Osadchy, Matt?”
“No, I don’t know her,” Lowenstein said.
“We also have what must be a couple of miles of tape of your friend Meyer in the sack with a half-dozen of Harriet Osadchy’s whores.”
“Jesus!” Lowenstein said.
“Now, I know and you know and Commissioner Czernich knows how hard it is to catch somebody actually taking money. But the Commissioner was very disappointed to learn that Internal Affairs didn’t take a close look at Meyer even after they got an anonymous call about the sonofabitch screwing Osadchy’s whores in every hotel in Center City.”
“They get all kinds of anonymous—”
“Goddamn it, Matt,” Carlucci flared, “don’t you start to make excuses.”
“—calls,” Lowenstein went on, undaunted. “A lot of them from disgruntled people just trying to make trouble.”
“Yeah, well, this disgruntled person—Peter thinks he’s a retired cop working as hotel security—was so disgruntled that after he called Internal Affairs twice and nothing happened, he wrote me a letter.”
“And you put your own private detective bureau to work on it,” Lowenstein said bitterly.